Everyday thoughts of the girl next door.

A books tag rehashed

I saw this tag on Adarkcomedycalledlife’s blog, but instead of listing my favorite and least favorite books etc, I just want to talk about books that have played a big part in my life, books that have left me high and dry, books that are my guilty pleasures and books I would love to read someday.

Books I love or “the ones I can read again and again and again and…..”

Everyone has a favorite book, mine is Pride and Prejudice. This was the very first book that had me going back to it to reread. There is just something about the easy chemistry between Lizzy and her father, the awkward passion between Jane and Bingley, and the uneasy, unspoken love between Lizzy and Darcy that makes me want to randomly open some chapter and start reading.

The Harry Potter series(yeah yeah I have harped on this subject a million times now) have so much intricacy that I discover new thing every time I read them. My favorite way of reading HP is pick one book(any book), open a chapter at random and start reading! I like the humanity, the love and the loyalty depicted throughout the series. Isn’t Ginny a sweetheart?

I love reading everything by Somerset Maugham. Especially his short stories about people who uproot themselves from home and land in strange lands and make strange relationships that evolve with time.

I like to feel good and be entertained when reading a book. Otherwise chances are I won’t like it all that much. A thousand splendid sons was an exception. Although I would be wary of picking it up to read it again, I was hooked to it until I finished it, and more. The amount of pain the women undergo made me cry. This was one book I loved, but one that left me sad and hopeless about life.

To Kill a Mockingbird is a classic that taught me what good writing should be like. Simple, and clean.

Three cups of tea by Greg Mortenson is a story of the triumph of human spirit and I loved every page of it.

Books that left me underwhelmed:

The White Tiger by Arvind Adiga tops this list. There was nothing in this book that could hold my interest for the whole duration, and the language made it even more difficult to follow the story. Even after I finished reading, I was wondering why I read the book, or even why I picked it up in the first place. It was replete with cliches and unnecessary story complications.

The God of Small Things was more like the God of Crap. To this day I do not understand the hype associated with this one. After this book and The White Tiger winning the Booker prize for their authors, I have lost all faith in the Booker committee.

Siddhartha by Herman Hesse – I don’t know why I was underwhelmed. Everyone I knew loved it. Anyone else out there with me?

Books I could never finish:

Ulysees by James Joyce definitely tops this list. Not because it is a bad book, ha! far from it! More because I am not competent enough to grasp the greatness of it. But, some day I shall definitely conquer this last holdout. I tried reading Ulysses three times already, and stopped each time at page 47. That is where I completely lost the plot, EVERY SINGLE TIME.

I must have read half of Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert before giving up. Was there anything in this book not selfish and shallow?

Books I love to hate:

Of course, the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer counts as the leader of this group. A weak lead character, stupid story and inane language. Enough said. But, hey, there is lots of action, romance, drama and comedy in it, and a Bollywood movie lover that I am, I lapped it all up!

My guilty pleasures:

Anything by Sophie Kinsella has to count as a guilty pleasure. There is absolutely nothing in these books to take home, but then each of them is a page turner. Pity that there was only 18 books she has authored. (Did you know she also writes under her real name Madeleine Wickham?)

There are countless others that I love or hate or don’t care about, but the ones listed here are the ones that evoke the strongest feeling of love, disgust, hatred or awe in me.

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10 Responses

I like the twist you’ve given to this tag :). And I am totally with you on A Thousand Splendid Suns.. I couldn’t put it down and I totally loved the book, its expressions and the character sketches. But I just couldn’t get myself to read it again – it seemed too painful!

I loved ‘God Of Small Things’ … she spoke against our worship of white skin, male children, family honor (e.g. in the face of domestic violence/divorce), caste bias and gender bias.
Ammu’s single affair, contrasted with her brother having a special door because he had ‘men’s needs’. And the mother replacing her husband with her son, the father’s complexes, the son’s incompetence…

And I like the way she wrote… I feel this book could be compared with Salman Rushdie’s ‘Midnight’s Children’.

And I have ordered ‘Three cups of tea’ by Greg Mortenson from flipkart – looking forward to receiving it.

Agree with you on Harry Potter and Pride and Prejudice. I admire God of Small Things though I foudn it too painful (in the way you of Thousand Splendid Suns) to read more than once. The Whtie Tiger, I like the premise… don’t think the writing is great and thus weird that it’s in the same league as God of Small Things and Midnight’s Children. Midnight’s Children is my all-time favourite, it’s leagues ahead of the other…probably that’s why it was selected as the Booker of Bookers (the best booker of the decade). I guess the Booker selections work for me… I loved The Line of Beauty also. I loved Eat Pray Love also… why did you find it selfish? And I disagree that Sophie Kinsella is a guilty pleasure… we should celebrate our love of frivolous chicklit.